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The Digital Britain report which we’ve been covering in detail over the last few months has finally arrived. The outcome doesn’t hold many surprises but there a few little shockers, so let’s take a look at exactly how the real report measures up to our predictions from earlier this week, and see what the future holds for broadband in the UK.
Universal Service Obligation:
The report details that a new ‘Universal Service Commitment’ which will give universal access at speed of 2 Mbps. This is welcome news amid rumours the government was going to drop that figure down in order to cover the average speeds from mobile broadband services. 2 Mbps isn’t exactly lightning fast – its actually 2 Mbps below that UK average and ten to twenty times slower than the fastest access offered in the UK currently. However, the agreement that access to broadband at a reasonable speed is a right rather than a privilege is great news.
Broadband Tax:
Although some funding is going to be gathered from the leftover money from the BBC’s digital switchover fund, there was always concern in the months leading up to the report that there simply wouldn’t be enough funds to complete the roll out of universal broadband. Landline users will now pay an extra £6 a year to support these efforts. The money will go towards upgrading the fixed line network – something that BT and virgin are already busy trying to achieve. It is estimated the new tax will raise around £175 million a year.
Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary responded: “The cable revolution happened without a cable tax. The satellite revolution happened without a satellite tax. Everyone recognises that public investment may be necessary to reach more remote parts of the country – but simply slapping on an extra tax is an old economy solution to a new economy problem.”, although he has welcomed the government’s commitment to universal broadband.
Piracy:
The government will give new powers to regular Ofcom to enforce a new target of bringing down piracy on UK service providers by 70% of the next year. The providers will be the main target of the move to cut down piracy, but persistent offenders could see details passed along to the music, movie and software industries. This could then result in court cases should the industry in question choose to sue.
Other methods may also be employed such as bans from certain sites and throttling of their internet speed, although it’s not clear exactly how and when these measures will be used or even put in place. Orange said it would be happy to co-operate but not pay for the system to be funded: “we would not agree to funding this process ourselves,” said a spokesperson for the company. “We do not believe that Orange and the vast majority of our law-abiding customers should be required to subsidise rights-holders’ actions.”
The Digital Britain report has given us what we expected all along, with the surprise of a new tax designed to cover the cost of rolling out new services. No, time will tell how likely 2 Mbps for everyone will come true and how well new piracy measures will really work to stop online copyright infringement.
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